Die, Adobe, die!

byIan BetteridgeonDecember 24, 2007

Back in the mid-1990’s, everyone in the design world hated one company with a passion: Quark. If you wanted to do professional print publishing, you had to use QuarkXPress. And Quark knew it, fleecing its customers with absurd pricing, adding on onerous conditions, and even at one point dongling its products.

Then along came Adobe InDesign. InDesign 1.0 wasn’t as good as QuarkXPress, but to print publishers who were fed up with Quark’s attitude to its customers, it didn’t matter: they switched, as soon as they could. Quark realised that it no longer had its customers in an arm-lock too late, and despite getting its act together, lost a lot of sales.

There’s an old saying that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes, and this is as true for software publishers as anyone else. And it appears Adobe, of all companies, simply doesn’t understand the lesson that it taught Quark.

How much do you think Photoshop costs? The answer, if you’re an American customer, is a whopping $649. It gets worse if you’re a European customer. In the UK – and without even taking into account VAT – you will pay nearly $1000 more for a copy of Creative Suite Premium compared to the US. Just the difference between the US and UK versions equates to the price of two copies of Logic Studio ($499 each) or nearly the cost of Final Cut Studio 2. If anyone from Adobe would care to explain why it costs more for me to download a product in the UK than it does to download the same code from the same servers in the US then I’d love to hear about it.

In other words, Adobe is simply gouging its customers because it knows that, if you want to do professional image manipulation, you have to use Photoshop. Like Quark, it knows that there isn’t another option and is pricing accordingly.

But, of course, this means that the first company which comes along with an alternate – even if it doesn’t quite match up to Photoshop’s feature set – is likely to clean up. And Adobe will deserve it. Roll on the Photoshop alternatives.

Comments on this entry are closed.

http://www.spaaace.com/cope James Wallis

And of course you can’t upgrade a US copy of an Adobe product if you’re not in the US or using a US credit-card, as I discovered in 1995. Oh, I’m sure there are ways. But you can’t do it legitimately.

Jordi J. Recort

it’s even worse than this…
I remember in the early 90’s when Photoshop was a “baby”.. professionals didn’t consider PS as a professional tool.. at these times, the expensive and exclusive tools was others like ColorStudio from Letraset.. very expensive and dongle protected. But Photoshop appeared, a single app that you can copy easily on a floppy disc.. and taking the advantage of piracy (huh! I said Piracy and Adobe on the same sentence.. let me check If I have an Adobe lawyer downstairs! with the police waiting for me!) to literally wipe up the competence of the market.
Now as you say, they’re the only serious tool around.. making us (at least the euopeans) pay 1500 EUR for a PS license with a complicated activation procedure that. Now Adobe are the forefront of the anti-software piracy.. Hypocrites! they used Piracy to be the leaders of the market.. now the prosecute it!
still looking for alternatives to Photoshop!

http://www.fuckyouadobe.com i hate adobe

seriously, fuck adobe, fuck them all, fuck them all to hell, the bunch of cunts.. DIE!! NO, I DONT WANT TO FUCKING UPDATE MY GOD DAMN SHOCKWAVE PLAYER! WHY IS THERE NO FUCKING OPTION TO DISABLE IT! I DONT WANT TO DO IT NOW, AND I SURE AS FUCK DONT WANT TO DO IT LATER SO JUST FUCKING DIE!!!!!!!